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(ECNS) — The Chinese team that constructed the world’s first ear in a lab and grafted it onto a patient last year has made new progress by developing injectable cartilage that can be used in human tissue repair and plastic surgery.

The regeneration technique involves taking a small part of cartilage tissue from behind the ear of a patient, culturing seed cells in the lab and reproducing cells in a sufficient amount to fill a biodegradable mould made by 3D-printing.

Professor Cao Yilin, director of National Tissue Engineering Research Center, said it marks a breakthrough from previous technology as the cultured cells can be injected into a patient’s body parts like the nose and chin where they continue to develop into normal tissue, a minimally invasive treatment similar to natural growth.

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The development of new cancer immunotherapies including checkpoint blockade and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has revolutionized cancer treatment. CAR T cells have shown tremendous success in certain B cell malignancies, resulting in U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of this approach for certain types of leukemia and lymphoma. However, response rates against solid cancer have been less successful to date. Approaches to modulate the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment including targeting checkpoint pathways, modulating metabolic pathways, and generating cytokine-producing T cells have led to considerable enhancement of adoptive T cell immunotherapy, first in preclinical models and now in patients.

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By Mayukh Saha / Truth Theory

According to Gerd Gigerenzer, who works at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, true intuitiveness is having the necessary instinct to understand what knowledge we need to focus on and what we can afford to forget.

In his work ‘Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious’, Gerd explains how intuition and rationality can go hand in hand by using himself as an example. While immersed in his research, he often gets a hunch which he usually takes forward because he just knows that it will give him the answer. But he also double checks using scientific formulae to actually figure out the reasons behind his hunches. But when it comes to personal matters, he goes solely by what his intuition tells him.

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David A. Sinclair, Ph.D., A.O. is an Australian biologist and a Professor in the Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. He is best known for his work on understanding why we age and how to slow its effects. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and received the Australian Commonwealth Prize. In 1995, he received a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Leonard Guarente. Since 1999 he has been a tenured professor in the Genetics Department of Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Sinclair is co-founder of several biotechnology companies (Sirtris, Ovascience, Genocea, Cohbar, MetroBiotech, ArcBio, Liberty Biosecurity) and is on the boards of several others. He is also co-founder and co-chief editor of the journal Aging. His work is featured in five books, two documentary movies, 60 Minutes, Morgan Freeman’s “Through the Wormhole” and other media.

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